Archive

As some of you figured out from the previous post, my recent paper (joint with Martin Kassabov) was accepted to the Annals of Mathematics. This being one of my childhood dreams (well, a version of it), I was elated for a few days. Then I thought – normal children don’t dream about this kind of stuff. In fact, we as a mathematical community have only community awards (as in prizes, medals, etc.) and have very few “personal achievement” benchmarks. But, of course, they are crucial for the “follow your dreams” approach to life (popularized famously in the Last Lecture). How can we make it work in mathematics?

I propose we invent some new “badges/statistics” which can be “awarded” by AMS automatically, based on the list of publications, and noted in the MathSciNet Author’s Profile. The awardees can then proudly mention them on the department websites, they can be included in Wikipedia entries of these mathematicians, etc. Such statistics are crucialeverywhere in sports, and most are individual achievements. Some were even invented to showcase a particular athlete. So I thought – we can also do this. Here is my list of proposed awards. Ok, it’s not very serious… Enjoy!

Publication badges

Now, imagine AMS awarded badges the same wayMathOverflow does, i.e. in bulk and for both minor and major contributions. People would just collect them in large numbers, and perhaps spark controversies. But what would they look like? Here is my take:

enthusiast (bronze) – published at least 1 paper a year, for 10 years (can be awarded every year when applicable)

fanatic (silver) – published at least 10 papers a year, for 20 years

obsessed (gold) – published at least 20 papers a year, for 30 years

nice paper (bronze) – paper has at least 2 citations

good paper (silver) – paper has at least 20 citations

great paper (gold) – paper has at least 200 citations

famous paper (platinum) – paper has at least 2000 citations

necromancer (silver) – cited a paper which has not been cited for 25 years

asleep at the wheel (silver) – published an erratum to own paper 10 years later

destroyer (silver) – disproved somebody’s published result by an explicit counterexample

peer pressure (silver) – retracted own paper, purchased and burned all copies, sent cease and desist letters to all websites which illegally host it

scholar (bronze) – at least one citation

supporter (bronze) – cited at least one paper

writer (bronze) – first paper

reviewer (bronze) – first MathSciNet review

self-learner (bronze) – solved own open problem in a later paper

self-citer (bronze) – first citation of own paper

self-fan (silver) – cited 5 own papers at least 5 times each

narcissist (gold) – cited 15 own papers at least 15 times each

enlightened rookie (silver) – first paper was cited at least 20 times

dry spell (bronze) – no papers for the past 3 years, but over 100 citations to older papers over the same period

remission (silver) – first published paper after a dry spell

soliloquy (bronze) – no citation other than self-citations for the past 5 years

drum shape whisperer (silver) – published two new objects with exactly same eigenvalues

neo-copernicus (silver) – found a coordinate system to die for

gaussian ingenuity (gold) – found eight proofs of the same law or theorem

fermatist (silver) – published paper has a proof sketched on the margins